The Frary Home Companion
Professor John Frary of Farmington, a former U.S. Congress candidate and retired history professor, shares his thoughts on all things political.
Additional Column Posts (1 - 17 of 17)
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A Democratic triumph?
By John Frary - Jul 21Mr. Peter Beinart, a professional, habitual and incurable liberal Democrat, admits that his party is going to take a licking in November, but ...
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Republican gubernatorial candidates make their pitch
By John Frary - May 12The seven Republican competitors for nomination offer similar diagnoses of Maine's problems. All agree that our state's economic development is ...
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The mysteries of bipartisan shtick
By John Frary - Mar 09"It's time to put an end to these partisan political games and get back to work." — Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director. This ...
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Complexity and nuance vs. 'lying, self-serving snakes'
By John Frary - Feb 24Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), appearing on Fox 29 in Philadelphia, explains the problem: "Frankly, most Americans I talk to are really concerned with ...
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Colleges in decline
By John Frary - Jan 27In my experience, the public reports and pronouncements of academic conferences, commissions, committees, task forces and workshops never, ever, ...
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Forgetting socialism
By John Frary - Jan 13Let me state my fundamental view at once. Socialism is to politics as coprophilia is to sex, a weird intellectual perversion which I find incompreh...
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Time for a holiday from hate?
By John Frary - Dec 23The Washington Post columnist, Church of Obama deacon and faithful servant of the Democratic Party E.J. Dionne has let the wildcat out of the bag ...
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Do you have 'faith' in government?
By John Frary - Dec 09Forty-five years ago I read a campaign speech by Lyndon Johnson in which he called upon the voters to have "faith" in their government. That is ...
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Fat pride — A huge diversity deficit?
By John Frary - Nov 19This month's election of Chris Christie as governor of New Jersey represents a kind of breakthrough and an important victory for Republicans in ...
The Thayne Ormsby I knew
By John Frary - Jul 14I've given shelter to a number of strays over the years, not all feline. Some had pretty exotic personalities. All the same, I was surprised to ...
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Care or catastrophe?
By John Frary - Mar 31I spent all day yesterday gazing deeply into my crystal ball and am now prepared to prophesy. PelosiCare will result in longer wait times, fewer ...
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A Hugo prophecy from Orono
By John Frary - Mar 04A few years ago I was pottering around in my garden when Red Russ Christensen, Farmington's leading Bolshevik, toiling up Red Schoolhouse Road ...
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Obama as 'Bush Lite'
By John Frary - Feb 03One of Barack Obama's very first acts as president was to announce the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison. The first anniversary of this ...
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Across the board and over the cliff
By John Frary - Jan 20Here's the problem: You have just retired. Your social security, pension and savings income is 10 percent below the salary to which you have grown ...
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Unchartered territory
By John Frary - Jan 06Legislation to allow charter schools in Maine was first proposed in 1997. Nothing happened. In July 2003 the Charter School Study Committee of the ...
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The man who would be king
By John Frary - Dec 15You don't have to search very long, or hard, to find a person right here in Farmington, Maine who has never read a book, or even a page, of the ...
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Tune in, turn on, drop out?
By John Frary - Nov 24The Maine Dropout Prevention Summit at UM Orono July 24 and 25 drew a mob of dropout prevention coordinators, principals, summer principals, ...